Euonymus atropurpureusJacq.

burningbush

WFO wfo-0000681607 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Euonymus atropurpureus, photographed by Yann Kemper
fig. a Yann Kemper, CC0 1.0 / 2022-05-28 / obs. 201294218

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

The specimen a real sheet, in a real collection

Herbarium
The New York Botanical Garden
Accession
01116309
Filed as
Euonymus atropurpureus Jacq.
Det. by
D. Estes 2009-01-01
Collected
D. E. Atha 2009-05-19
Origin
US
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC BY 4.0)

A real pressed plant, in a real collection, under the accession number above. Not an illustration of one. The holding institution does not serve this sheet’s image to third parties, so there is no photograph here. The record is real and the link goes to it. Where we hold no openly licensed sheet for a species this section is simply absent, and where a sheet never recorded who determined it, that field stays empty rather than being filled in. Roughly half of all herbarium sheets never recorded a determiner, which is ordinary.

Native range 39 botanical countries

Regions where Euonymus atropurpureus is native: Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Ontario, Pennsylvania, Rhode I., South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin AlabamaArkansasConnecticutFloridaGeorgiaIllinoisIndianaIowaKansasKentuckyLouisianaMaineMarylandMassachusettsMichiganMinnesotaMississippiMissouriMontanaNebraskaNew HampshireNew JerseyNew YorkNorth CarolinaNorth DakotaOhioOklahomaOntarioPennsylvaniaSouth CarolinaSouth DakotaTennesseeTexasVirginiaWest VirginiaWisconsin DelawareDistrict of ColumbiaRhode I.
Native distribution of Euonymus atropurpureus, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Alabama ALA NORTHERN AMERICA
Arkansas ARK
Connecticut CNT
Delaware DEL
District of Columbia WDC
Florida FLA
Georgia GEO
Illinois ILL
Indiana INI
Iowa IOW
Kansas KAN
Kentucky KTY
Louisiana LOU
Maine MAI
Maryland MRY
Massachusetts MAS
Michigan MIC
Minnesota MIN
Mississippi MSI
Missouri MSO
Montana MNT
Nebraska NEB
New Hampshire NWH
New Jersey NWJ
New York NWY
North Carolina NCA
North Dakota NDA
Ohio OHI
Oklahoma OKL
Ontario ONT
Pennsylvania PEN
Rhode I. RHO
South Carolina SCA
South Dakota SDA
Tennessee TEN
Texas TEX
Virginia VRG
West Virginia WVA
Wisconsin WIS

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Flowering 305 in flower of 647 examined

Proportion of examined Euonymus atropurpureus in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 0 4 too few examined
Feb 0 4 too few examined
Mar 0 1 too few examined
Apr 27 36 75% 59% to 86%
May 129 141 91% 86% to 95%
Jun 132 142 93% 88% to 96%
Jul 4 18 22% 9% to 45%
Aug 0 11 0% 0% to 26%
Sep 2 39 5% 1% to 17%
Oct 6 118 5% 2% to 11%
Nov 4 111 4% 1% to 9%
Dec 1 22 5% 1% to 22%

Peak flowering in Jun. Each bar is the share of Euonymus atropurpureus observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 305 of 647 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 3 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Where it actually grows measured, from 2,002 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -9.9 °C -3.9 °C 3.9 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 27.1 °C 29.9 °C 34.8 °C
Annual rainfall 867 mm 1,075 mm 1,315 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 83 mm 203 mm 270 mm

It is found where winters bring hard frost. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 2,002 research-grade observations of Euonymus atropurpureus that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one. Climate from CHELSA V2.1 (Karger et al. 2017); occurrences from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 8 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Euonymus atropurpureus Hook.
  • Euonymus atropurpureus var. cheatumii Lundell
  • Euonymus atropurpureus var. grandifolius Raf.
  • Euonymus atropurpureus var. latifolius Raf.
  • Euonymus atropurpureus var. oblongifolius Raf.
  • Euonymus caroliniensis Marshall
  • Euonymus latifolius Marshall
  • Euonymus tristis Salisb.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.